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Oak Ridge National Laboratory Deputy Director to Speak at Clarkson University on Engineering a Sustainable Future

Thomas Zacharia, deputy director for science and technology at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., will speak on "Engineering a Sustainable Future: The Role of Science and Technology," at Clarkson University on Friday, October 22, at 2:30 p.m. in the new Student Center forum.

A reception with refreshments will precede the presentation at 2 p.m. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

A Clarkson alumnus, Zacharia is the inaugural speaker in the New Horizons in Engineering Distinguished Lectureship Series, dedicated to improving the understanding of important issues facing engineering and society in the 21st century.

Extraordinary advances in science and technology during the 20th century enabled the creation of a vibrant global economy that relies on abundant energy. Today, increasing global demands for adequate and affordable energy, coupled with growing awareness of the environmental impacts of our current patterns of energy use, present a formidable challenge.

A sustainable future will require not only improvements in our existing energy technologies, but also new options for energy production, distribution, and use. Science and technology will be essential to finding the transformational solutions needed to move us toward a sustainable energy future.

Zacharia will discuss recent efforts aimed at realizing these solutions.

Zacharia oversees one of the nation’s largest research and development programs, with annual expenditures of $1.3 billion in materials and physical sciences, energy and engineering sciences, computing and computational sciences, life and environmental sciences, neutron sciences, and national security.

He is also a professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he successfully led the proposal to establish the National Institute for Computational Sciences (NICS) through a $65 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Zacharia joined the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1987 as a postdoctoral researcher in the Metals and Ceramics Division. In 1998 he became the director of the Computer Science and Mathematics Division. From 2000-2001, he was deputy associate laboratory director for high performance computing, and then was named associate laboratory director for the newly formed Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate. He served as director from 2001 to 2009, when he was appointed to his present position.

Zacharia holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Regional Technical College, India, an M.S. in materials science from the University of Mississippi, and a Ph.D. in engineering science from Clarkson. He has won numerous prestigious awards.

Clarkson University launches leaders into the global economy. One in six alumni already leads as a CEO, VP or equivalent senior executive of a company. Located just outside the Adirondack Park in Potsdam, N.Y., Clarkson is a nationally recognized research university for undergraduates with select graduate programs in signature areas of academic excellence directed toward the world’s pressing issues. Through 50 rigorous programs of study in engineering, business, arts, sciences and health sciences, the entire learning-living community spans boundaries across disciplines, nations and cultures to build powers of observation, challenge the status quo, and connect discovery and engineering innovation with enterprise.